Science, Fate, and Revenge
by Person4
Summary: One night three strangers stumble into Rei's camp at the base of Mt. Myrnegg. BoFIII, just a smidge AU for characters meeting before they should.


Rei didn't like being so close to McNeil village. He'd set up camp close to Mt. Myrnegg, the rocks at its base tall enough to hide the town, its fields, and the forest beyond them from his view, but it still wasn't enough. Even the scent of the air around him was enough was enough to bring back memories that he tried to keep deeply buried under his rage and desire for revenge.

Still, he couldn't avoid it. He'd tailed three shady-looking men all the way from Syn City to the mansion and had to stay close, just in case this would finally be his chance to get hard evidence about which gang the mayor had connections with. Even with all his anger, and even knowing that the criminals who ran Syn City were hardly squeaky clean even if it turned out that they weren't the ones behind the attack that had taken Teepo and Ryu from him, he couldn't begin attacking people from there until he was sure that they were the ones he was after. It was, he thought sometimes, the line that separated the man from the tiger. 

He didn't expect anyone to see his fire, even in the darkness of the night. The same boulders that hid the village from his view would keep the light from reaching it, and nobody was stupid enough to try crossing the mountain after dark and come on him from that way.

At least, that was what he thought until he heard a cheerful voice just above and behind him say, "What luck, Peco! Somebody else is out here." A second later he heard somebody scrambling down the last few feet of the mountain, a miniature avalanche of pebbles tumbling down behind them, and then a young woman walked into the circle of light thrown off by his fire followed closely by what looked to be a giant onion and a blob of metal. 

"I'm so glad that you're here!" the woman said, sitting down in front of the fire without even waiting for an invitation. "I was worried when the sun went down and I still hadn't made it off the mountain, and I'm so _tired_ after picking my way down it in the dark that I would have just fallen down and gone to sleep the minute I got on flat land."

She turned her attention to her hair, picking out small twigs and other bits of detritus that the dark mountain path had left in her braids, and he took the opportunity to ask "Who the heck're you?" 

The woman paused and blinked at him over the top of her glasses, then turned her attention to the tiny metal man. "How rude of us! Honey, you should have reminded me to introduce us," she said, although Rei had yet to hear a single sound out of a creature that would indicate it was capable to talking. "I'm sorry; it's been over a year since I've spent much time with other people, and it's easy to forget your manners. I'm Momo, and these are Honey and Peco."

"A walking onion. Don't that beat all," he muttered, looking down at the third member of the small party. "The name's Rei. What makes you think I'm going to let you share my camp?"

"Rei?" Momo repeated with a thoughtful look on her face, completely ignoring the question. "Rei... Rei... Where have I heard that name before?"

At the same time Honey hopped to its feet and waddled over to Rei as quickly as it could. It stared at him for a long moment with its unblinking eyes, then returned to Momo and began jumping in place, loudly whirring.

"I can't play now, Honey. I'm trying to think," Momo said, not even looking at the little machine.

"If you've ever been down to McNeil before and listened to the villagers, you probably heard one of 'em talking about me," Rei offered, just to pull her brain back to the planet. "I _know_ you ain't met me before."

"That must be it," she agreed, oblivious to the way Honey began waving its arms up and down. "I've been in the area a few times in the past, and it does feel like a name I've only heard. So, may we stay now that we've introduced ourselves?

Rei looked towards the tree line boarding the road. He could hear the monsters rustling through the shrubs, even more active at night than the were during the day. In the short time they'd been speaking to each other, Momo hadn't given him the impression that she was aware enough of her surroundings to make it to the village unharmed. And, for all his faults, he always had been a soft touch for people in trouble. "Eh, fine," he grudgingly said. "Not like the fire'll give off less heat with people sharing it."

"Thank you," she said with a smile. "If you're hungry, I still have some supplies in my bag. I'd be happy to pay you back by cooking dinner!" She didn't wait for him to respond before producing a pouch containing a few vegetables, a small amount of cured meat, and a small frying pan with legs to hold it over the fire.

"Looks like you know what you're doing," he said, surprised.

"I traveled for a while," she said, keeping her attention on what she was doing as she sliced the vegetables. "There are things about it you don't forget."

"Wouldn't have figured you to be the traveler type," Rei said, beginning to relax again. It had been a _long_ time since he'd last had anything to eat aside from what he could scrounge up in the woods, and just the scent of the knob of fat she'd pulled from somewhere beginning to melt in the pan was enough to make his stomach tell him it wanted something other than gamey meat and edible roots for a change.

"I wouldn't have thought so either," she said, while Rei tried to keep from drooling, "but it ended up being one of the happiest times of my life." Her smile wavered for a moment, and though she forced it to stay on her face her eyes were so sad that it was obvious even to him that this wasn't a happy subject for her. "But that's all over now."

"Don't see why you'd say that," Rei said, looking her over. "Your legs aren't busted, so you can always get up and go."

"It wouldn't be the same without all of my friends," she said, shaking her head. Then she suddenly clapped her hands together. "That's why I'm here, actually!"

"What, one of 'em live in McNeil."

"He did once, before he died last year" she said matter-of-factly. Her hands were beginning to fidget over her pan, as though she desperately wanted to do something with them even though it wasn't time to stir the food she was preparing yet. "I... well, it's silly, maybe, since he wasn't even living here anymore by the time I met him, but I thought that maybe I could do something in honor of him, and since I know he disliked the mayor here I thought maybe I could do something with that."

"You planning on assassinating McNeil?" Rei asked, raising an eyebrow. Momo might just be a woman after his own heart after all.

"Oh, no! No, nothing like that," she said, holding her hands up in front of her like she was warding off the very notion. "I've heard of the way he hardly leaves any crops for the people in the village, and I thought I could help with _that_."

"You're usually a farmer?" he asked, incredulous. The idea seemed to fit her even less than traveling did.

"I can't help that way, but... have you ever heard of the produce plant in eastern Wyndia?"

"Heard the stuff it grows tastes like crap," he replied, now eyeballing the vegetables she was cooking suspiciously. "Doubt anybody's gonna thank you if you're planning on bringing in anything from there."

"My father was one of the men who helped invent the chrysm reactors that makes the plants grow," she said her lips twitching upwards slightly. Before Rei could decide whether or not he should be apologizing for insulting it, she continued, her voice more quiet than before. "I know that you're right, the food it produces _is_ horrible. But I _know_ my father; there hasn't been a greater scientist than him since the Techno Age. When _he_ talked about enhanced crops, he wouldn't have meant ones that grow quickly but are almost inedible. I'm positive that the owners must have convinced one of the other scientists working there to meddle with his machines so they could make more money." 

"Not gettin' how this is supposed to help McNeil." 

Instead of answering directly, she turned to her onion. "Peco, will you bring me the prototype?"

Peco stood up, easily lifting the large box he had strapped to his back, and carried it to Momo. "Priyu pyu pruuuuuu," it burbled as she took it from him.

"Thank you, Peco." She opened the box and pulled out a machine, looking at it with the same sort of reverence usually reserved for holy objects. "This is a prototype reactor that my father made. It works on a much smaller scale than the larger ones used at the plant, but I believe I've worked out how to increase its productivity." She began drawing in the dirt at her side with a fingertip, and after a moment Rei realized that she was scribbling out letters and numbers, although he couldn't make heads or tails of them. "I'll need to make other modifications too, of course. The town's grain _can't_ grow faster than the mayor's share, or he'd notice something was happening. By my estimates, based on the little time I had to study the current set-up at the plant, almost ninety-percent of their reactors' chrysm energy is used to force growth, so just working out how to remove that function should allow me to fertilize a much larger amount of land _and_ improve the taste. I'll need to alter it further to bolster the nutritional content in the plants. Then the chrysm itself should make a difference; the plant uses whatever it can buy, but in my studies I've learned that all chrysm is _not_ equal to all tasks. Fire and ice are most common, but neither would react well with growing things."

Her words came faster and faster as she spoke until she was talking at an excited babble, her eyes wide and fervent in the light of the fire. Unfortunately, Rei had lost track of what she was talking about somewhere around the word 'prototype', and it just seemed more and more like she was speaking a foreign language from there. "You're plannin' on setting that up in the field?" he asked slowly, hoping that he'd picked that one piece of information out correctly. "How the heck d'you think you're gonna do that without McNeil seein' it out there?"

"I'm glad that you asked!" she exclaimed, thrusting one finger into the air as if she was about to make some amazing point. But all she said was, "I'm going to bury it!"

"Bury it," Rei repeated flatly. 

"After I make it air-tight, of course. Not only will that keep anyone from seeing it, but I theorize that having the chrysm in direct contact with the soil will be another way of increasing the range..." She trailed off, her nose twitching once, then twice, before she exclaimed, "Oh no, the dinner!" and snatched the now burning food off the fire.

Rei leaned back and looked up at the stars as Momo fret over the food, trying to determine without adequate light whether it was hopelessly burnt or just slightly charred. Although he was glad that the impossible for him to follow science lesson was over, he had to admit that it had been nice to have a conversation with another person again.

• • •

Rei left camp early the next day to make sure he got to McNeil's manor before the mayor began his business for the day. Over the past year he'd come to know the man's habits well enough to be sure he hadn't so much as greeted the mobsters Rei was following yet; as soon as the day began to get the slightest bit dim the mayor's attention turned to his own pleasure, ignoring business matters until the next morning. The gang members hadn't reached the manor until it was almost dark.

He'd settled himself on the roof beside the chimney he knew connected to the room McNeil met visitors in and prepared for a long day of eavesdropping. It wasn't unpleasant being up there; although it wasn't yet summer, the sun was strong enough that day to warm the bricks in the chimney and the tiles on the roof, and he was self-aware enough to admit that once it rose high enough for a beam to land directly on him the cat in Rei just wanted to roll onto its back and purr.

If there was only some way not to think about how he'd been waiting at almost that exact same spot for Teepo and Ryu to meet up with him on that last night they'd had together, and to force down the almost overwhelming rage that made his teeth start sharpening into fangs and the day-old stubble he hadn't bother to shave that morning soften into fur the moment he heard McNeil's voice drift up the flue, it would be a nice place to relax.

He thought he'd be staying there all day, but around noon he heard yelling start from the lawn outside the manor's yard. "Rei! Hello, Rei! Down here!"

Rei say bolt upright, biting back a curse when the sudden movement knocked a tile free under his foot and sent it skittering down the roof to smash into the pavement below. He held his breath, listening hard, but there was no break in the conversation in the room below him, and if one of the guards patrolling the manor had noticed the sound he was at least investigating it on his own instead of yelling for the others.

Only when he had determined that he was still safe for the moment did he turn and look in the direction of the yelling, spotting Momo in an instant. It wasn't exactly hard to do, she was standing in the middle of the lawn and waving her arms wildly in the air to catch his attention. Honey was tugging at one of her pant legs, trying, Rei thought, to get her to be quiet, but she was ignoring the little machine.

He couldn't risk looking over the edge of the roof to see if any guards were below, not when it would be so easy for them to spot him if they were examining the eaves. Instead he took a deep breath, gathered every bit of energy into his limbs that he could manage so he'd get as much speed as he could from a standing start, and dashed forward on the opposite side of the roof from where the tile had fallen. He launched himself to the wall and then beyond so quickly that he'd hopefully be a blur to anyone below him.

"What the hell d'you think you're _doing_, you moron?" he growled out when he reached Momo, even as he yanked her hard by the arm to behind a tree, providing at least a little cover if the men at the front gate decided to see what all the yelling was about.

She made an indignant noise in the back of her throat as she pulled away from his grasp. "I was only trying to get your attention. No need to be _rude._"

"'Get my attention'? Yeah, mine and every guard on this side've the building!"

"Well, _I_ wasn't doing anything that I needed to hide," she said, glaring back at him, although the effect was ruined by the way she nervously toyed with the end of one of her ears at the same time. "And if you _were_, you shouldn't be doing it while it's light out!"

The response brought his mind to a stuttering halt for a moment. After a lifetime of thievery he was used to getting lectures about obeying the law from everybody who thought he even _looked_ like he was going to do something illegal. He didn't know how to respond to somebody who only took issue with the time he picked to do it. "Didn't exactly have a choice," he muttered when his brain started running, finding that all the anger had drained out of him from the surprise. "What the heck do you want anyway?"

Momo brightened up again, and this time she was the one to grab his arm, pulling him in the direction of the meadow McNeil's cows grazed in. "I wanted to know if you could show me roughly which section of the field is the town's share from the hill here. I don't know anybody in town that I could ask, and you seem to know a lot about the area."

"Is _that_ all?" he asked with a snort. "You could've figured that one out by yourself. Here, I'll show you." She had to let go of him when he started walking towards the highest part of the hill, unable to quite keep up with his long-legged stride. When he reached the spot he wanted, he pointed down at the field below them. "Right over there, the part where the grain grows way thicker than it does everywhere else."

"That's..." she blinked as she looked down at the land. "How do they get away with that?"

"It's a piece of cake. Sure, you look at it from up here or walk through the field and suddenly reach that part it's obvious, but like hell is McNeil ever gonna risk steppin' on a cowpat or sloggin' through the mud to do it, and you can't tell when you're lookin' at the edge of the field from the same level as it. Anybody who works for him that might see it comes from around here, and they aren't gonna take the extra food out've their family's mouths by tellin' the mayor about it. They'd be in trouble if he ever bothered to weigh the grain, but as long as they harvest his part first and let him take a look at how big his section was compared to the rest he thinks everything's going the way he wants it to." He shrugged and turned to start walking back to the manor ground and get back to his work, saying as he went, "The villagers are scared as hell of McNeil. This is the only sort of revenge they'll risk taking on him for the taxes."

"Being able to see the exact area I need to affect will make this _so_ much easier," he heard her say behind him as he left, before launching into more of the scientific babble he found so hard to keep up with. Whether she was talking to herself or to Honey he wasn't sure, but as he walked he found the corners of his lips beginning to quirk up at what a strange girl she was.

• • •

He came back to camp as the sun began to set, and was startled to see a fire already burning and Momo and her onion sitting near it. Her prototype reactor was on the ground in front of them and a variety of chrysm crystals were spread around it. "What the heck are you doing back here?"

She only glanced up at him for a moment before she returned to what she was doing. "Peco is going to let me know which type of chrysm works best in the reactor," she said, the little onion chirping and bouncing in place when when said his name. "Since he's a plant himself he can feel what works and what doesn't. Be careful if you get close; you have no idea how much effort it took to collect even this many different chrysm samples."

"Wasn't asking about _that,_" he said, although he listened to her warning and settled himself down on the opposite side of the fire from her where he couldn't possibly make anything go wrong. "What happened to just needing a place to bed down for the night, then getting a room at the inn?"

"Oh, that! I did mean to, but the more I thought about it the more I thought it would be a better idea to stay out here with you. I'm going to need to do a lot of work on this machine, and it would be better to do it where I won't be bothering anyone." Then she paused, as if just realizing that Rei himself was an 'anyone', and looked up at him. "I won't be bothering _you_, will I? I forgot that I should ask first."

He thought about raising a fuss about it, letting the girl known in no uncertain terms that his tent wasn't a stopping point for any traveler who happened to come by. But he knew already that there wasn't any point to fighting it, not when he didn't actually mind her company and her goals were in line with his own. So instead he finally just repeated what he'd said the night before, "Eh, fine."

"Thank you, Rei." A smile flickered across her face, vanishing as quickly as it had come when she turned her attention away from him and back to her machine. She finished securing the piece of chrysm she was currently testing in place, and said, "Okay, Peco. How's this?"

She turned on the reactor and a low humming noise filled the air. Peco closed his eyes, swaying back and forth slightly and humming along with the machine. After a minute of this his eyes suddenly shot open and he exclaimed, "Byuu!"

Rei raised an eyebrow. "That actually tell you anything?"

"Of course!" Momo replied as she switched off the machine and began removing the piece of chrysm. "Peco may not be able to speak our language, but he knows how to let people know what he likes and dislikes. That piece was good, but not, I think, the best we'll be able to do. It's what I expected from water chrysm."

He watched her as she worked on the reactor, tightening a screw here, loosening one there, with a serious frown on her face all the while. After a few minutes he said, "Must've been some friend to be worth all this trouble."

Her hands went still in the middle of her work, although she kept her eyes fixed on the machine when she spoke. "He was. I still can't forgive myself for--" She cut herself off, pressing her lips together tightly.

He'd never been good at dealing with other people's emotions, but he hesitantly offered, "It might, y'know, make you feel better. Talking. I mean, about whatever happened." Then, all in a rush, he added, "If it makes it any easier my family died what must've been around the same time as your friend. So, I know what it's like." 

She took a deep breath then nodded, just the slightest inclination of her head. Although it still took her a long while to speak again, he waited patiently until she finally said in a low, stilted, voice that didn't sound at all like herself, "I was with him, just before he died. The two of us, and another friend of ours. At the entrance to the room he died in, they asked me to wait behind. So I did, even though we'd been told he might die there. If I'd only refused to stay behind, maybe I could have helped..." she trailed off, shaking her head hard as if to try forcing the negative thoughts from it. Peco cuddled up to her side and began making soft crooning noises as she started to speak again. "A little while later our other friend came out of the room, bleeding from wounds all over his body. He didn't stop to explain what had happened, either to me or to the rest of our group who were waiting outside the ruins we were in, just left as quickly as he could with his injuries. When I went into the room to see if I could at least recover his body, there was nothing there but fresh blood and scorch marks. I don't know if something ate him, or if whatever fire left those mark was hot enough to burn his entire body to ashes, or what else might have happened."

"I'm sorry that happened to you," he offered, not knowing what else he could say. "No wonder you were wanting to do something for him."

"That's not the only reason, though," she said, pushing her hair back from her face even while seeming to push her gloom back with each word. "My father always believed that the most important thing a scientist can do is find new ways to modify the machines we find. Ever since we lost our knowledge from the Techno Age most mechanics, even in Junk Town, only worry about fixing whatever they can find enough to make them functional again. But father taught me that we should try to regain that lost knowledge instead, so that one day we might even be able to build machines from scratch again. Whatever I learn from modifying this reactor I'll remember when I want to make more complicated changes in another machine someday."

They lapsed into silence then, Momo's hands moving across the reactor again as she learned whatever she could from it.

• • •

It took longer than he'd expected after that first day for her to ask him what he was doing, lurking on the manor's roof every day. Almost a week had passed with him spying and her working on her machine during the day and only meeting up with one and other again come evening.

When she asked he didn't bother hiding the truth, just shrugged and said, "Revenge," as he sharpened the blade of his dagger. It wasn't like she had any love for McNeil, and he had enough material he could blackmail her with if he ever went insane and decided to deal with the bastard. It was only fair to give her some back.

"That's a very strange sort of revenge, if all it involves is sitting on a roof," she said after a moment. There was no condemnation in her voice.

"There're two men there from the Syn City crime syndicate," he said, not even bothering to make a face at her deliberate obtuseness. "I'm spying on them now, trying to find out if I'm right in thinking they're to blame for something that happened awhile back. If they are... I'm going to bring them down." He was proud of himself for, in his own opinion, sounding cool instead of overwhelmingly angry.

"The Syn City syndicate," she repeated flatly. "You're going to destroy it on your own?" Suddenly she jumped to her feet and reached down to pull him to his, dragging him away from the camp.

"Hey! What the heck do you think you're doing?"

"Don't complain. I'm going to help you."

For a few minutes Rei had horrible mental images of her barging straight into the manor and hunting the gangsters down, causing the same sort of trouble that had gotten Ryu and Teepo killed to begin with. But instead she made a beeline straight for Cedar Woods, and he wasn't really sure if that felt any better. He avoided the woods, always, unable to deal with either the happy memories of the time he had made a family there or the horrible ones of how it had all ended. He was intensely relieved when she veered off the main road at the edge of the woods and pulled him to a small strand of trees nearby.

It was only when they entered it that he realized that Momo hadn't let go of his hand during the entire walk from the foot of the mountain.

There was an elderly man camping between the trees, and Rei could tell just by looking at him that he had been planning on going to sleep before they interrupted him. But he brightened up the moment he saw Momo. "Ah, greetings! It's been so long! Is my student here with you?" 

"I'm afraid not, Mygas," she said, kneeling in front of the man. "But, this is Rei. I wanted to know if you would make him another of your students."

"Wait, _what?_" Rei exclaimed, staring at Momo like she'd just asked the man to make him grow another head. "_That's_ your plan for helping me?"

She looked at him seriously. "I've heard about Syn City, Rei. If you want to be able to stop them all alone you won't only need to be strong, you'll need to be smart too. Mygas can help you with that."

"Wait a second," he said when her words sank in, "are you saying you think I'm stupid?"

"Not at all! If you were, nothing he could teach you would help. But strategy, tactics, these are things you're going to need to think about if you want to have any hope of getting your revenge." She paused for a moment, then smiled at him, "Don't think of it as trying to get smarter, think of it as refining what's already there."

Rei looked at the old man, who, he had to admit, did have the look of somebody with brains to spare, then he turned back to Momo. "What's it matter to you anyway? Most people aren't big on helping out with revenge plots." 

"I... suppose you could say it ties into my reasons for being here to begin with."

"Honoring your friend? Don't see how me getting rid of them is gonna do anything for him." 

"That's because you don't know the entire story. When I first met him, I helped him with _his_ revenge too. Of course, he didn't really want to take it, he was just trying to get home, but the men who'd wronged him kept chasing him until he had no choice. I guess you could say... it's like fate that I met him for his vengeance then met you when you were working on yours while I'm doing something for him." She laughed suddenly for the first time since he'd met her. "'Fate.' How unscientific of me to say something like that!"

He couldn't help but notice how loud and bold the sound of her laughter was, how her entire mouth stretched open wide to release the sound. All the village girls he'd met in his time would hide even the smallest smile behind their hands and catch back any laughter as soon as a titter escaped them. Of course, he supposed that could have something to do with him; the other people in town wouldn't look kindly on a girl showing too much attention to a known thief.

He was so caught up in it that he didn't notice Mygas declaring him his apprentice until the old man stepped forward to wring his hand.

• • •

The gangsters left, and Rei didn't. It was the first change in his routine of following men back and forth from Syn City to McNeil since the day he'd made the connection between the two. 

But it wasn't like he didn't know after listening in on dozens of reports that they'd just parrot back exactly what they'd talked about with McNeil to their boss, all of which he'd heard already. Or that it wasn't easy as breathing to spot any thugs coming down the road from that direction so he'd know when he needed to spy again. And there were lessons with the old man, who'd taken to teaching strategy instead of magic like a fish to water, to worry about and, more than that, there was watching as Momo pulled her machine together in bits and pieces, guided by Peco's chirps and trills. He didn't know why but somehow, even though he still didn't know what the heck she was talking about most of the time when she explained some function or another, it had become important to him to see how it ended.

Which was why it was such a surprise to him when Momo, Peco, and Honey just vanished with it one evening while he was fishing for their supper, returning a few hours later covered in dirt and minus the machine. "It's done!" she called out to him as the entered the camp area, almost skipping with glee. 

"Wait," he said, not really wanting to believe what he knew was true. "You just went off and buried it."

"Of course! There was no more work to be done, so I thought it would be best to get it into the ground as soon as possible." Her steps slowed as she looked at him and seemed to realize that he wasn't as happy as she thought he should be. "Oh. Oh, wait. Did you want to come too? I know that you were willing to listen to me when I talked about it, but I didn't think you were really interested in machinery!"

"I'm not," he admitted. "Still, would've been nice to see the finished product after watching you mess with it all this time."

"I can show you where it's buried, if you'd like." The smile she'd been wearing when she came back to camp stretched across her face again, so wide that it looked like it must hurt the corners of her mouth. "You might not even need me. I swear, as soon as I pushed the soil over it I thought that I could feel it even trying to make _me_ grow. I practically had to _drag_ Peco away."

As she continued to chatter on about how well it had gone he fully realized, for the first time, how beautiful she looked, beaming and flushed with triumph, her features softened by the light of the fire.

He realized that he wanted to kiss her.

He always had been unable to hold back when he wanted something.

• • •

"I'll be going back to the plant next," she said the next morning, unable to banish a blush from her cheeks as she packed up her travel bags. "I want to learn more about Peco, and that's the best place to do it. But I'll be back a week or two before harvest in the fall, to dig the reactor up again, and then in the spring to rebury it. I can't just leave it there all year long, or the plow would destroy it." All the was said in the same breathless rush she used when she was planning her machines, but then she paused and looked up at him, her cheeks growing even pinker, and slowly said, "Maybe, if you're in town at the same time, we could meet up?"

"If I don't have any leads to follow, I could see about that," he replied, and made a mental note to make sure he had _nothing_ to do come harvest.


End file.
